The libraries at Columbia University and Cornell University are pleased to announce an 18-month, $150,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to conduct a project intended to expand significantly the preservation coverage of e-journals and to implement strategies that will sustain the initiative beyond the duration of the project.

The project, a joint undertaking of the partnership between the libraries of Columbia and Cornell known as 2CUL, will identify priority content from the perspective of the research library community and make significant progress towards increasing the number of e-journals archived by major preservation programs.

Both Columbia and Cornell hold the preservation of, and continuity of access to, knowledge and culture as a core aspect of their mission, and they bring to the work a wealth of experience and substantial resources.

“The main objective of this project is to increase the number and range of e-journals that will be preserved, but it’s equally important to develop and promote methods that can be broadly adopted to expand our work,” said Oya Rieger, associate university librarian for digital scholarship and preservation services at Cornell University. “Making sure that the vital content in e-journals is available to scholars and researchers is an essential part of the process.”

Electronic serials originate in all regions of the world, with the libraries of Columbia and Cornell each providing access to well over 100,000 titles. They are very significant as a record of scholarly research but also have importance as they contribute to cultural expression, report current events, and convey scientific, economic, legal, and governmental information.

In many fields, e-journals have become the predominant means of access for current research and, as libraries, concerned about space, act to consolidate their print collections, users increasingly rely for access on the digitized versions of historical titles.

[Our emphasis] “Preservation initiatives such as CLOCKSS, LOCKSS, and Portico have been successful in preserving thousands of important journals, yet there are still at least twice as many that are not preserved anywhere,” said Bob Wolven, associate university librarian for bibliographic services & collection development at Columbia. “Libraries are eager to see more progress, and this project is an important step towards engaging more parties in a broad effort.”

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.